Kasey Keller speaks on MLS officiating and the playoff push

Here were a few leftover quotes from last week that I wanted to post. Do you agree with the Sounders FC captain…?

* * *

(Do you feel like an unfair amount of PK calls are going against the team?) “It sure feels that way. How many PKs have we won this year? One? I think if you went around the league it is a little bit interesting. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a couple handballs in their box, unintentionally that hit somebody in the arm, that we haven’t got the call. We’ve obviously conceded a couple of those. If that foul was on Findley, then it sure looked like the same contact on Alvaro in the box on the other end. I don’t get it personally. The nice part is the last two penalties we’ve conceded haven’t had any sort of bearing on the outcome of the game. That part of it is fine, but it is frustrating on our side because we would love to be able to knock away a couple of those penalties and help our (cause).”

(If the numbers support that claim, can you think of a reason for it?) “I don’t know. I know that people have said in the past that big crowds have put influence on referees. Maybe it’s a situation where they’re overcompensating and trying to go in a different direction to show, ‘Yeah, Seattle has a big crowd, but we’re not influenced by that.’ Then they go a little bit in the opposite direction. It’s all theoretical obviously, there’s no way to prove anything. It’s frustrating on our side because sometimes we don’t feel we get quite the calls that maybe we deserve or maybe there’s a little bit of overcompensation the other way.”

(On the team standing in the playoff push) “We’re fine. It’s in our hands, that’s all you can ask for. We don’t need results to go our way. We know if we pick up the points that are out there for us to gather, we’ll make the playoffs. Is it going to be a tough task? Sure. Is it going to be the same that it was 15 weeks when we were in a deep hole? No. We pulled ourselves out of the hole and now it’s a case of consistently picking up points. I would’ve liked to have gone the rest of the season without losing a game, but OK we lost to New England. I think the hard part is everyone is looking at the huge travel schedule that we have and the games that we have. It’s going to be a really interesting time for the guys to be able to play through the little knocks and the fatigue, both physically and mentally, and be able to play 90 minutes. That’s all part of the learning process of a young team that hasn’t been in this situation before.”